Call of Duty: Black Ops II Rakes in $500 Million on Launch Day

And here we thought Halo‘s resurgence into the record books was impressive. $300 million sales worldwide on the opening week is nothing to scoff about, and I’m glad they got to enjoy that feeling for just a week. Unless you are Activision, though, sales records just don’t really have much meaning anymore.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is being said to have earned an Earth-shattering $500 million on the first day alone. All across the board, retailers are claiming the biggest selling game launch of all time. Gamestop sold one million copies through midnight launches alone. Amazon has never seen anything like it before.

And of course, CEOs are out to compare their earnings next to movies rather than the competition within their own markets. Activion’s Bobby Kotick seems more concerned with Star Wars and Harry Potter than Halo or Battlefield:

“With first day sales of over half a billion dollars worldwide, we believe Call of Duty is the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth year in a row. Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded worldwide theatrical box office receipts for ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Star Wars,’ the two most successful movie franchises of all time. Given the challenged macro-economic environment, we remain cautious about the balance of 2012 and 2013.”

I was hoping for an underdog victory from Halo 4, but in this ridiculous world where Halo 4 can be considered an underdog, the launches these games generate are becoming absolutely insane. I was glad to see critics much more critical and ambivalent towards the series than in years past though, and the absolute thrashing of Medal of Honor: Warfighter gives me hope that we might be moving on from our military obsession in the next few years.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is now available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.